Redheaded Distractions
by Amaya Shinkuyoake
Summary: Annisina captures Gwendel to force him away from his paperwork to eat lunch and...things ensue. Fun things! With bondage even!
1. Part 1

I decided I ought to post this up here, since it's pretty innocent…mostly

Just a bit of crackish fun with one of my favourite couples! It's so much fun to mess with Gwendel's mind. O:-)

Redheaded Distractions Pt. 1

Gwendel Von Walter sat in his office going through the reams of paperwork that had accumulated in his and the Maou's absence and he sighed. He wasn't quite sure what to do about Annisina. He'd left her in charge of the castle partly to give her something to do, but mostly to keep her safe. Konrad's apparent disappearance had shocked them all, and he hadn't been quite sure what kind of situation they were going into, so he thought it better to make sure that she was too busy to think about things like trying to "help" in their search with her inventions and thus putting herself into availability as a target. When he'd seen what she'd done to the castle while he was gone, though…

He shuddered, his hands twitching. Those inventions were NOT cute, and seemingly none of them did what they were supposed to do, turning them into a hazard for all who walked within or without the castle walls. He had to get her to get rid of them (none of the soldiers would dare, for fear of them exploding or having some kind of anti-tamper mechanisms in them, and honestly, Gwendel couldn't blame them) but thus far he hadn't been able to bring it up with her.

Gwendel shook his head and forced himself to go back to the paperwork. He could worry about Annisina and her horrors later, this paperwork wasn't going to do itself, and Yuuri wasn't around to do it either, so that left only him, as usual.

By noon he was deeply engrossed once more, which was probably why he never heard the door open and then close again, or the slight clicking of high heels on the stone floor in between the rugs that were strewn around the room. He did notice when two large stacks of papers were moved aside and a red-cloth-clad seat sat down in the middle of the desk.

"What are you doing!" he objected, looking up into the sparkling, mirthful blue eyes of his childhood friend and tormentor.

"I'm fetching you for lunch," she said matter-of-factly, "You've been skipping too many meals recently; you're getting positively thin."

"I'm fine. If you're so concerned why don't you have the maids bring something in here and I'll eat it while I work," Gwendel shrugged, looking back down at the paperwork and preparing to get back to work, derriere on his desk or not.

"I think not. You will get away from those papers for half an hour or I'll just have to get you to help me with the castle's defenses some more," she said, throwing him an angelic smile, "I have some wonderful new ideas! I was thinking, what about if we made certain stones under the portcullis sensitive to weight so that if someone steps on them they'll be a trigger for something - like say a cauldron of boiling oil right overhead? Then maybe we could…"

"Annisina….." Gwendel growled, cutting her off, "Did it occur to you that if we do that, we'll be just as likely to end up sending boiling oil down on our own troops? As well as the wagons which come every day to bring supplies to the castle? Come on now! Be reasonable!"

"But Gwennie, it's such a good idea!" she grinned, enthusiasm entirely undaunted by his criticism of her "wonderful idea".

"Annisina, I need to work," he sighed, still reading and signing papers, studiously attempting to ignore her.

"I hadn't wanted to do this, but since you leave me no choice…" Annisina sighed, then leaned over the desk and drew something thin and gauzy out of her dress. "You're coming to lunch whether you like it or not, Gwendel Von Walter, and I am going to take you there… with this!" With a flick of her wrist the gauzy thing uncoiled to become a thin, strong rope which wound around his middle, trapping his arms at his sides. "I call it "Control-kun", isn't it wonderful?" she beamed.

"Annisina, this is not funny!" Gwendel protested, struggling against the rope to absolutely no avail. It had him tightly bound from shoulders to waist, and far enough down the arms so that he couldn't lift them from his sides.

"I think the look suits you quite well," she beamed, leaning down to kiss his forehead, giggling. "Now come along, Gwennie, it's time for lunch!"

Gwendel quickly found - to his great dismay - that not only did "Control-kun" keep him tied up, it also made him do what Annisina said. He found himself standing up from his chair and following her, even though his mind was sending frantic signals to his legs not to.

"Annisina, what is IN this thing? What spell did you put on it? Annisina! Damnit let me go! I'll come to lunch, I promise, but this is too much! I'm not some kind of prisoner or a dog on a leash!"

Annisina looked back on him, her expression vaguely surprised, but what she saw there obviously tweaked something within her, because she sighed and with a flick of the wrist she loosened the bonds somewhat. "You promise you'll come with me right now down to lunch?" she asked suspiciously.

"I swear," Gwendel said, "just for goodness sakes let me GO!"

"Well, I suppose if you swear," she said, flicking her wrist again and untying him, the coil of rope coming back into her hand as obediently as if it were a puppy returning to its mistress. "But I'm not putting Control-kun away, just in case. Especially since it seems to be so…effective," she smirked.

Gwendel held back his shudder until she was looking away and headed for the door. Even lunch away from the desperately overdue paperwork was worth it to keep from being tied up and dragged there. Besides the horrible humiliation of appearing at the lunch table tied up with Annisina holding his "leash", the lack of control had been positively _frightening_!

With Annisina's clicking steps close behind him, Gwendel waked down to the dining room, resigned to his fate. Luckily, with so few nobles in the castle since most of the usual contingent were out supporting Yuuri, there was no one there to see, except for the two of them and the maid who served lunch. Gwendel had to privately admit to himself that he _was_ hungry, but he never said a world of that out loud, just ate as quickly as he could manage while still remaining polite, and then stood up to get back to work.

"Where do you think you're going?" Annisina asked testily, looking up from her lunch which she was still eating politely and daintily.

"Back to work, I'm done eating," Gwendel said, frowning at having to state the obvious.

"You're not allowed to go back to work until I'm finished," Annisina shook her head, patting Control-kun, "Where are your manners, Lord von Walter?"

"Okay, fine, I'm not going anywhere," Gwendel sighed, pushing his empty plate away from in front of him and wishing he had his crochet hooks and wool on hand. Gwendel hated to just sit.

Desperate to find something to do rather than just staring blankly at his empty plate, he let his gaze sweep over the room. He found two spider webs in high corners, a third hanging from the chandelier, and a strange smudge in the middle of the ceiling whose origins he didn't even want to contemplate. Disturbed now as well as bored, he forced his gaze down. There wasn't much point in examining the paintings or tapestries, neither had been changed much in the past fifty years; the most recent addition being a mere ten years old, which was still enough time to put it well into the realm of the familiar, so Gwendel found his gaze drifting to his dining companion.

The first thing that caught his eye was that nasty bit of rope or whatever it was, slung casually over her shoulder as she ate and obviously within easy reach (and thus preventing his escape) but when he let his eyes take in more than just the threat to his sanity, he found himself bizarrely fascinated. He'd never really taken the time to watch someone eat before, as far as he could remember, and the expressions which crossed Annisina's face as she took small, polite bites and chewed neatly before swallowing… He found himself becoming almost hypnotized by the rhythmic motions and forced himself to look elsewhere. Unfortunately he found that his eyes didn't want to leave her pert, cupid-bow lips. That was almost more disturbing than anything else that had happened today. He had obviously been spending far too much time worrying and not enough time crocheting if his mind was beginning to wander like that again. He evidently needed to regain his focus. His eyes slowly glazed over as he continued to watch her lips move, and his mind drifted back to a long-ago argument with his uncle. He'd been a hotheaded adolescent at the time, and furious with his uncle for trying to run his life…

* * *

"But _why_ Uncle? I'm perfectly within my rights if I want to make a move, and it's not as though Mother objects!" young Gwendel protested.

"Gwendel von Walter, you know better than that! Think about your bloodline! You are my brother's heir, and will soon enough be head of the Walter household. How do you think it would look to your subjects? AS for your mother, you ought to know by now that she cares little or nothing for appearances and is hardly the right kind of role model! Listen; until you reach your majority, I am the one who will lead you on issues related to the house von Walter, and this is my final…"

* * *

"Gweeeeendel…"

An insistent female voice interrupted his train of memory just as he was reaching the point where he might remember what the argument had been about. It seemed important for some reason. He looked up and realized that Annisina was standing next to his chair with a stern-leaning-toward-angry look on her face and slapping Control-kun against her leg threateningly.

"I said: why are you staring at me!

Gwendel paled. How was he going to explain his way out of this one?

Annisina continued to slap the rope/invention against her leg impatiently as she waited for a response.

"Come now Gwendel, surely all that paperwork hasn't fried your brain completely."

"I was watching you to see when you'd be finished eating so I could get back to work," he snapped, covering his sudden confusion with his habitual irritability.

"Is that so? Well obviously you weren't paying very close attention then, because I finished lunch a couple of minutes ago. No, I think my first assessment was right, you've _definitely_ been doing too much paperwork. I'm absolutely appalled! What if you were in a state like this and there was an attack? I think this demands immediate intervention, so no, you are not going back to work, you are coming with me. Willing or unwilling, I don't much care," she added, shaking Control-kun threateningly.

Gwendel was still feeling wary enough of her to get up quickly from his chair and nod for her to do whatever it was she was waiting to do with him. He felt almost fatalistic as she left the room, checking over her shoulder to make sure he followed.

He really wished he could remember what had been so important about his memory earlier, and what had sparked that argument with his uncle. All he did know about it for sure was that it hadn't been an argument that he'd won. Any argument which ended with his uncle invoking "the pride of the Family von Walter" had always been a loss for him. Even now, after the man had long stepped down from his position as regent, they tended to disagree about issues of the management of the family estates. Especially when so much of Gwendel's time lately had been taken up with the Maou. At least now he had an ally though. Hube had agreed, now that he had been pardoned, to help in running the estate, and Gwendel knew for sure that Hube would take his side, especially with his human lover and half-human child to consider. Gwendel chuckled. He would have loved to be a fly on the wall for _that_ particular discussion! Hube's time away had definitely changed the attitude his father had implanted in him about humans.

Gwendel was so lost in though that he didn't notice when Annisina stopped suddenly in front of a door. Consequently he managed to walk right into her, tripping him and sending both of them tumbling to the floor in a heap.

"Sorry," Gwendel said apologetically, moving off her and offering a hand to get her back on her feet.

She took it and gave him an unusually worried look, especially for her.

"Gwendel, what is _with_ you? I'm almost tempted to take you to the healers you're so out of it," she said, shaking her had as she came to her feet.

"I'm fine," he protested, "I just have a lot on my mind lately, that's all."

"If you say so," she shook her head, "Come on, we're here, you may as well come in and we'll try this first," she sighed, taking his hand and puling him into the room.

Once he was inside she let go of him, then closed and locked the door behind them.

Er…where are we anyway?" Gwendel asked, looking around at what appeared to be some sort of combination between a laboratory and a bizarre torture chamber, "just out of curiosity."

"My suite, of course," Annisina said, bustling around and fiddling with various machines. "This is where I keep my more secret projects, now please, have a seat." She indicated a comfortable armchair in a little alcove between the main room they were in and the bedroom. "You obviously need to rest, so just sit there. It won't bite you," she added when she saw his somewhat dubious expression.

Still a bit wary, Gwendel went over to the chair and sat down.

"Good boy," she patted his hand, leaning over the chair to pull up a bag that was dangling of the arm. "Here, why don't you keep yourself occupied while I get things set up? I know how you hate to sit still."

"What is…?" Gwendel started to ask, but then his fingers encountered the familiar shapes of crochet hooks and yarn, and a slow, relaxed smile passed over his face as he emptied the bag out onto his lap and began sorting through the materials there, already letting his mind drift to what cute thing he would create next. He didn't even think to ask why Annisina had crocheting materials hanging form a comfortable chair in her own suite when he hadn't seen her show any interest in the art since both of them were young.

It didn't take very long for Gwendel to become completely absorbed in his work, and Annisina took as much advantage of that as she dared, scanning him with various different machines. All her readings were very confused, though. For some reason all she could get were impressions of what he was concentrating on right at that moment, which meant she had lots of readouts about crochet patterns and cute stuffed animals. The only machine which gave her a different reading was one she hadn't even realized she had turned on. The love meter she'd used when Wolfram and Yuuri went "missing" in the bearbee house kept indicating _something_, but it didn't seem to be connected directly to Gwendel's obsession with "cute things" the way it had been before. Annisina was confused. The result made it actually look like some outside force was interfering with those feelings. They seemed very strong, but also very strongly suppressed.

"Surely that can't be healthy," she muttered to herself as she fiddled with the dials, trying to get a clearer readout. Suddenly her eyes brightened as she had an absolutely brilliant idea. She looked at the happily oblivious Gwendel sitting in the armchair and then she looked down at Control-kun still slung over her arm. It would be a perfect test of Control-kun's abilities, and she really _did_ need to know what was going on with Gwendel…

Her mind made up, Annisina walked casually over to where Gwendel was sitting and perched on the arm of the chair. Then, using her well-honed combat skills she flicked her wrist so that just the tip of Control-kun circled Gwendel's neck lightly like a collar and wound back around itself.

Gwendel's hands stilled and the partially-completed crochet project fell into his lap, but he didn't say anything. Annisina was surprised at that. After all, she wasn't sending any command to him not to speak. She made him turn his head toward her and saw that his eyes were completely blank. Did he always look like that when e was crocheting, she wondered? If he did, it was frightening. His gaze was just so… blank!

"Alright Gwennie, I need you to wake up now," she instructed him.

Immidiately the life came back into his eyes, although he didn't move. Control-kun was _definitely_ performing up to expectations!

"Annisina, what are you doing?" he growled, frowning at her but completely unable to move in any other way.

"I'm finding out what's wrong with you," she explained matter-of-factly, "Now I need you to answer a few questions for me," she smiled

"What would you like to know?" he asked in a pleasant tone (his eyes blazing showed that in fact this was _not_ what he had wanted to say at all).

"Such a good boy you are. Let's start off with an easy question for you:" She lounged on the edge of the chair, being sure to keep a firm hold on his "leash". "What made you so distracted at lunch?"

"Your lips," he answered simply, "and I remembered something about my uncle."

The first part of his answer shocked her so much that she almost fell off the arm of the chair, and she blushed such a bright shade of red that her face almost matched her hair. The second part of the answer, however, made her concerned. She knew which uncle Gwendel meant - he never referred to Stoffel by anything other than his given name, and Annisina didn't _like_ that particular uncle. At all.

"What did you remember about your uncle?" she asked, forcing the blush from her face.

"An argument, from when I was young," Gwendel answered. Quite willingly, actually. He was finding that he could remember more about the argument now that he was being questioned about it, and he hoped she would keep asking about that and not something else potentially embarrassing, since she seemed to have him completely under her control.

Annisina was intrigued by this as well, since she couldn't seem to see the connection between his (she suppressed the blush again) fascination with her lips during lunch and an old argument with his uncle. "Okay, so how does an argument with your uncle when you were young connect to you being completely distracted at lunch?" she asked. She couldn't bring herself to ask "how does it connect to my lips", that was just too embarrassing.

"I'm not quite sure, that's what I was trying to figure out," Gwendel admitted, "I was bored, so I was looking around the room, then I started watching you eat, then I noticed that I couldn't stop looking at your lips. That's a bad sign, it means I haven't been crocheting enough. Anyway then I started remembering this argument between me and my uncle that must have taken place a few years before he stepped down since I was almost grown but he was still the one in charge of the estate…" Gwendel's explanation trailed off into silence, his gaze abstracting again.

Annisina blinked. She'd never heard the taciturn earth-mage come out with so many words all together at once since she could remember, and she'd known him almost as long as he could talk. Something decidedly odd was going on here.

"What was the argument about?" she asked, curious now.

"I don't know, that's when you started growling at me," he shrugged.

"If you remembered the argument, surely you remember what it was about," Annisina pointed out, "so I want you to remember it now. What was the argument about?"

"I need to crochet," Gwendel's eyes went blank again and his fingers actually twitched, trying to reach for the hooks and yarn on his lap.

Annisina raised an eyebrow. This was very suspicious. Control-kun was working perfectly, so Gwendel shouldn't have any control whatsoever over any part of his body, so how were his fingers moving? It had to be an outside spell, something set upon him by someone else, and if this response was triggered by her trying to get him to remember the subject of an argument with his uncle…

"You are not to crochet," she said firmly, "you are to come with me and sit in a different chair now."

At least he still obeyed her direct commands. He easily rose from the chair, the crochet hooks and balls of wool falling onto the floor, and followed her to a chair tucked away between two other large coils of metal and a few tables, where she instructed him to sit.

"You should be able to remember here," she said, depressing a switch in one of the coils that started the whole contraption humming.

Gwendel's whole body twitched and he grunted in obvious discomfort, but Annisina made herself ignore it. She knew the dampening field would affect him as well, but this was the only thing she could think of to get through this obviously interdicted mental block.

"Now, what was the argument between your uncle and you that you were remembering? What was it about?" she asked again.

"You," he said simply, and then his eyes widened. "I remember now, it was about you!"

... To Be Continued ...


	2. Part 2

Redheaded Distractions Pt. 2

"Me!" Annisina stared at him, "What about me? I know your uncle doesn't like me much, but…"

Now that he'd remembered, though, Gwendel was having a private fit all in his own mind. He was, he decided, going to do something very nasty to his uncle. And if he could get Yuuri to agree to banish the man, so much the better…

"All about you," Gwendel said thoughtfully, "I wanted his permission to propose and he flat-out refused, and then when I stormed off and refused to back down he hit me with some kind of spell…"

"You wanted his permission to…what?" Annisina felt her knees go out from under her and suddenly she was sitting on the floor staring up at Gwendel sitting in the chair.

Only he wasn't sitting in the chair anymore, since she'd let go of Control-kun in her shock and now he was kneeling next to her looking all worried. She decided she liked that expression on his face. Even if it did make wrinkles on his forehead.

"I wanted his permission to propose to you," Gwendel said softly, picking her up and sitting back down in the chair with her in his lap. "Is that really so much of a shock? Do you not remember how close we were for a time when we were younger? I know I do."

"We were close, I suppose, yes, but…but then all of a sudden you hated me and I thought I'd done something wrong," Annisina looked away, "I never thought…"

"…That my dear uncle might have been behind it? Well he was, and I apologize for what he made me do." Gwendel pulled her closer into his arms and tucked her head under his chin, "Even if it was just as childhood friends I would never have been as harsh with you as I have been."

"It's not your fault," Annisina shook her head, "You know I know perfectly well what he thinks of me, it doesn't surprise me in the least that he would throw a fit about my "common" blood being brought into the "noble House von Walter" and especially by the heir."

"Don't you dare refer to yourself as common, or I'll have to spank you," Gwendel warned her, "You know I don't like to hear people suggest that. Just because your family is from the boarder and was awarded their nobility later than the rest of the landed families that does NOT make you common any more than I am."

Annisina could feel his hands clench against her, and his arms pull her a little closer, and she almost didn't know what to do with the sensation. She'd given up the idea of being courted decades ago, making herself and everyone else believe that she wasn't interested in anything other than her inventions, to the point that any courtship would have been nothing but a bother, but being held like this… It felt awfully good, she had to admit.

Now that he could fully remember what had happened, Gwendel was feeling very torn. All of a sudden he wanted to start back exactly where he had unwillingly left things off, but at the same time…it had been many years and much water under the bridge between them since then, and he knew that their circumstances were different. Neither of them were foolish lovestruck adolescents anymore, and both of them had busy lives. Lives which already included each other in now long-defined patterns and ways. Part of his mind wanted to just slap her across the cheek right now, kiss her into insensibility, and then spend the next month or so locked away with her in a room making up for lost time, but his more logical side realized that this wouldn't work. Unfortunately. For one thing, neither of them could get away for an entire month, and for another…well, this was what _he_ wanted, he had no idea at all of how Annisina felt about the idea. She might not want to change their relationship at all, and might want to just forget this admission of his former intentions had ever been made. That thought hurt, but he had to acknowledge the truth of it. After all, who was to say what might have happened had he managed to propose all those years ago.

"Um, Gwendel, are you okay?" Annisina interrupted him, poking his cheek, "You look like you're brooding."

"Thinking," he corrected her.

"Okay, so you're thinking," she arched an eyebrow, back in more familiar territory now, despite still being a bit weirded out that he was holding her so close he was almost enveloping her. "What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking about what the next step here should be," he said, one hand almost unconsciously stroking her back.

"Next step? I should think it would be obvious. Go after your uncle and explain to him that you won't be controlled anymore," she pointed out.

"Oh, that is definitely on the list," Gwendel agreed, "but I meant what the next step should be for us. If you want to forget this admission ever happened and go on with your life I guess I can understand..." he started, making sure to provide her the easy way out.

Annisina pulled back in shock to stare at him. "You can't be suggesting... You _are_! Gwendel von Walter, you are a silly, noble fool, aren't you? What good would forgetting about this do anyone? Do you think it would make me any happier? Would it make you any happier?" Her eyes widened. "Wait, _would_ it make you happier to just forget that all of this ever happened?" she gasped, suddenly feeling unreasonably hurt and betrayed.

Gwendel shook his head firmly. "No, it wouldn't, but... I know you're a busy, fulfilled woman with your own life, and..."

Well that was just too much! Where did he get off trying to play the pitiable lovesick swain? Annisina pulled back and slapped him hard across the cheek. "You just think a little, you idiotic man!" she screeched, trying to pull herself out of his grip.

He wasn't having any of _that_, though. Trained fighter though she might be, pulling yourself out of the grip of a bigger person when you were on their lap was not an easy thing, and besides...

"I _really_ hope you meant that," he purred, swooping in and kissing her thoroughly.

Annisina's eyes widened, then she decided to stop fighting it and just go with this. It felt...incredible. Far too wonderful to stop. Instead, she shifted around in the chair until she was kneeling straddling his lap, her arms wrapped around his neck and shoulders and her body pressed tightly against his as she kissed him back, quickly moving from clumsy to adept.

After a long battle for dominance (which Annisina ended up winning out of pure stubbornness combined with judicious use of her feminine wiles) Gwendel pulled back with a grin on his face.

"You hit hard," he chuckled, panting slightly, "I'm going to be wearing a bruise from that slap for a couple of days at least."

"Good," Annisina said firmly, "that way you won't forget."

"You think I would forget?" he raised an eyebrow at her.

"Well, you forgot before, didn't you?"

"Hey!" he objected. "That wasn't my fault!"

"I know, I know, blame your uncle," she rolled her eyes at him playfully, sitting down comfortably on his knees, "I just want to be sure that when you leave this dampening field you won't forget again."

Gwendel frowned. "You do have a point, but you know, I can't just sit here until someone has gone to confront my uncle and made him remove the interdiction."

"I know. And both our strongest curse-breakers are away right now..."

"...and they may be on their way home, but I'm not going to sit here in this chair waiting for them either," Gwendel said firmly.

"No? If you wait here in the room I could make it worth your while," she grinned, "I'd just expand the dampening field to cover the entire suite, and then you can stay here until they get back. You could have the palace functionaries bring your paperwork in, if you're so insistent on doing it, and I have crochet materials here, as you've seen..."

"And you'd be here, of course," Gwendel nodded, "The idea does have merit…as long as you promise not to make me work on your experiments the whole time."

"Don't be silly, most of them won't work inside the dampening field anyway," Annisina stuck her tongue out at him. "It would be a different sort of experiment, to see how things work between us without your uncle's interference."

"Yes, that's definitely an important thing to consider," Gwendel agreed. "Alright; if you can set up a dampening field around the suite then I'll stay here until either Gunter or Gisela gets back and can remove the curse."

"I was hoping you'd say that," Annisina said, pulling herself back up along his body to press her lips lightly against his. "I've already discovered that I quite like kissing you, who knows what else I might discover!"

"Do you know," Gwendel said, a little breathlessly, "the thing I most wanted to do when I first remembered what happened was to kiss you into insensibility and then spend the next month together making up for lost time. Do you think the kingdom could do without us for that long?"

"I'm sure everyone would manage," Annisina whispered against his lips.

"Good," he whispered back, then closed his mouth over hers and pulled her tight against him, "We've got a lot of wasted time to make up for."

"We certainly do," she breathed as he moved his kissed down her neck, nipping at the alabaster column and then soothing the small marks with his lips and tongue. If he was going to wear a mark from her, he was determined that she was going to wear some marks of his too.

"Last report put them about two days out, didn't it?" he asked conversationally as he continued nibbling.

"About that…" she moaned softly, "Aren't I supposed to be expanding the field so you can move out of this chair?"

"In a minute," he said lazily, licking up her neck to suck at the pulse point just beneath her chin, "I'm busy just now and I'd be most upset if you got up and left."

"Gwendel…" she said, half-moaning and half-exasperated.

He just chuckled and nipped at her jaw.

"_Gwen_del!"

"Okay fine, I'll let you go for now. But only because you deserve something more comfortable than this chair for everything I have on my mind. Even if we don't do _everything_ I have on my mind," he said with a lopsided smile, kissing her forehead and then lifting her off his lap to set her down on her feet, holding her around the waist until he was sure she was steady and not going to have her knees give out from under her again. That had frightened him just a little bit.

"Thank you!" she rolled her eyes, but she giggled as well, "Now, to expand this dampening field…"

* * *

The next two days were quite...educational for the new couple. There were a few bickering arguments, one or two knock-down, drag-out fights, and Control-kun came into play quite a few times for...various reasons, but overall things were going well. It was halfway through their third day together when a guard came to the door of the suite with the news that Yuuri and the rest had returned.

"Just wait here," Annisina kissed Gwendel's cheek (which was still showing a lovely yellowing bruise; he was lucky she hadn't punched him instead, it probably would have broken his zygomatic arch), "I'll go greet them for you and bring someone here to break this curse."

"Thank you Darling, I appreciate that," he smiled ironically. "It would be kindof pointless for me to spend all this time in the dampening field only to leave it now that there's a solution at hand." He pulled her down for a kiss. "Hurry back, though!"

"I will!" she winked over her shoulder at him as she closed the door behind her.

It was only another five minutes that he spent lounging on the retiring chair Annisina kept in her rather lavish bedroom before the door opened again, admitting Annisina and a whole crowd more people than Gwendel had been expecting.

Annisina smiled apologetically when she saw his rather stunned expression at the crowd that had followed her in. "Sorry, but when I was so insistent on bringing Gisela up to see you right away they got worried, and..."

Cheri pushed past Annisina, rushing to Gwendel's side and pulled him into a "motherly" hug. "Poor Gwennie! Where are you hurt? Tell Momma what's wrong!"

"...I couldn't persuade them you weren't hurt," Annisina sighed.

Gwendel sighed as well, pulling his face out of his mother's abundant cleavage to frown at her. "Hahaue, I'm _fine_, I haven't been injured, and I'm not sick, I just need a curse removed. _That's_ why I'm in here with a dampening field up and we need Gisela's skills."

Only half listening, Cheri checked her son over for wounds, and then her eyes widened as she took in the bruise on his left cheek. "Oh! My baby went and got himself engaged when I was away! How could you do that to your poor mother? I would have wanted to _be_ here to congratulate you right away!" she complained, hugging him again.

The rest of the crowd that had followed Annisina into the room (this consisting of Yuuri, Wolfram, Konrad, Yozak and Gisela) all reacted with predictable amounts of shock to this announcement, Wolfram, as usual, being the loudest.

"Engaged? But to who?" he protested. "Surely not..." He stared at Gwendel and then at Annisina, taking in the small bruises covering her neck as well as the large bruise on his brother's cheek.

"And why not?" Annisina frowned, going over and sitting next to Gwendel, who wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in to lean against him.

"But...but you two..." Yuuri looked entirely confused

"Hate each other?" Annisina raised an eyebrow.

"Well, not hate, but... Gwendel was always avoiding you," Yuuri pointed out.

"That wasn't exactly my choice," Gwendel explained to his confused-looking young king, "thus why I'm sitting in here behind a dampening field. My dear beloved uncle on my father's side decided he was against the idea of us being together and put what's called an interdiction curse on me so that I forgot anything connected to the idea that I wanted to marry Annisina."

"I always wondered what happened to change your mind," Cheri said thoughtfully, "Especially since I'd already given you carte blanche. I just assumed she'd refused so I was a nice, polite woman and didn't mention it. I should have known something else was going on. That Bertram is a menace and always has been."

"He sounds awful!" Yuuri nodded, "Who would do that to their own nephew? Just because he wanted to get married? That's not fair!"

"No, it's not," Konrad agreed, "But that sort of thing happens more often than you'd think."

"Well that's not right," Yuuri protested, "Remind me we have to do something about that."

Wolfram rolled his eyes. Yuuri and his justice again. Just so long as he didn't try to go Maou here in the room…

"Well, regardless of where it came from, this curse obviously needs to be removed," Gisela said, all business now, "Annisina if I could prevail upon you to turn the dampening field off so I can get to work?"

"Of course," Annisina nodded, heading for the coil placed near the door. She looked unusually nervous, but everyone watching silently agreed that she probably had every reason to be very concerned that this work right.

She waited until Cheri had moved out of the way and Gisela had taken up a position next to Gwendel.

"I hadn't expected so much of an audience for this," he grumbled as everyone's eyes riveted on him. Then Annisina flicked the switch on the dampening field and his expression immidiately started to blank out. "Need to crochet," he muttered, starting to try to stand up to go searching for his crochet materials, but Gisela pushed him firmly back down.

"Not just yet, your Excellency, let me do something first," she said gently, patting his shoulder. Then she concentrated and brought her power to bear, her hands glowing and reacting with something that seemed to be a sort of shield around Gwendel's head.

"There!" she said as the bubble/shield thing popped and Gwendel's eyes became bright again.

"Is it gone?" he asked quickly.

"If you know to ask then you shouldn't need to," Gisela rolled her eyes, "Yes, it's gone."

"Good," he said, "Now thank you very much for your help, but it's time for everyone to leave, if you don't mind."

"You want to celebrate, of course!" Cheri giggled, immidiately starting to scoot the others out of the room, "By all means! Take all the time you need, we'll take care of things here for you. Don't even think of coming out of this room until you've decided on a date or I'm going to be a grandma or both!"

"_Hahaue!_" Gwendel turned bright red.

"You know, I don't think I've ever seen him that colour before," Yozak observed to Konrad with a grin as Cheri pushed them out the door.

"Her too," Gisela agreed with a giggle at Annisina, who was standing next to the door quite ready to shut it as soon as everyone had left.

"Have fun you two! Don't worry about Bertram, we'll deal with his punishment!" Cheri called back once she'd gotten everyone out (even Yozak, who'd tried to stay behind to tease Gwendel some more, not having had many opportunities to do so and relishing every one). She winked at them, waving and closing the door behind her.

"Say, Annisina," Gwendel said thoughtfully once the door was closed, "How high up is your room? Are the windows large enough to get through?"

"I think so, why do you ask?" she frowned at him.

"Because I have a feeling we might want to elope," he sighed, "before my mother gets any ideas into her head."

Annisina's eyes widened. "Oh dear gods…" she shuddered, "I think you're right…let's go check the size of those windows. I'm sure I have _something_ here we could climb down on."

With one quick, worried glance between the two of them they both rushed into the bedroom with only one thought on their minds:

ESCAPE!

Wheee! Well that was a fun ride! Hope to write more with those two another time, gotta play with them some more.


End file.
